One of the projects presented was featured in The State of Housing Design 2023, a first-of-its-kind book by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies that reviews national trends, ideas, and critical issues as they relate to multi-family architecture and urban design.

The “Missing Middle” (a phrase coined by Opticos Design), can be described as “a range of house-scale buildings with multiple units—compatible in scale and form with detached single-family homes—located in a walkable neighborhood.” This scale of housing takes on many forms depending on the region and context, offering a unique set of housing options for residents. In the New England context, these include duplexes, triple-deckers, townhouses, walk up housing options, and more. The panel’s discussion not only highlighted the need for more missing middle housing typologies, but also welcomed a discussion of any forms of housing that are affordable for households whose incomes are too high for subsidized housing, but are priced out by market rent or homeownership options.

Attendees also had the chance to learn more about the The State of Housing Design 2023 publication.

To key off the conversation Sam Naylor presented The State of Housing Design 2023, the first book in a new series that reviews national trends, ideas, and critical issues as they relate to residential design. This volume examines 113 recently built housing projects across 27 states, and of notable designs that address issues of affordability, social cohesion, sustainability, aesthetics, density, and urbanism. It contains, across 26 themes (or chapters) critical essays, architectural diagrams, project photographs, and a survey of housing practitioners across the country on the issues they face crowdsourced from 1,300 responses.

It reveals the depth of financial, regulatory, and architectural maneuvering that is often required to make projects on difficult sites, and to ensure good design survives the often long process of implementation. The book, which was written and published by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University was co-edited by Sam Naylor, Daniel D’Oca, and Chris Herbert. It includes contributions from nine design journalists: Mimi Zeiger, Timothy Schuler, Nate Berg, Adele Peters, Marianela D’Aprile, Charles Shafaieh, Patrick Sisson, Stephen Zacks, and Inga Saffron. It is available for free on the Joint Center's website as an online PDF, and available for purchase at many bookstores.

In leading into the discussion on missing middle housing Sam also showed new research on the massing growing gap of mid-rise and mid-scale housing in Greater Boston. A gap of projects between 10-50 units, which has only grown over the decades, and can be seen as partially a result of many regulatory, zoning, and building code thresholds that make these scale of projects expensive and impractical.

Image credit: Natalie Tague, BSA

The Panelist Presentations

Studio Luz’s Hansy Better Barraza, architect, urban designer and LEED Accredited Professional, spoke about the firm’s ongoing 12-unit Homeownership project in Dorchester. The team was selected to develop housing on two parcels, as part of the City of Boston’s Welcome Home Boston Initiative Phase II. Key project themes were mentioned, including context and massing, accessibility, unit type (one-, two-, and three-bedrooms), to name a few. The two three-story six (6 ) unit apartment buildings offer sustainable homeownership options to future residents. The building’s height follows its surrounding context, where nearby buildings range from two-and-a-half to three stories.

Jonathan Evans of MASS Design Group spoke about the Maple Street project located in Poughkeepsie New York. Although outside of New England, this workforce housing project has forty (40) studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom units, and is organized around a new north-south public pedestrian street that seeks to reconnect downtown Poughkeepsie to the larger city. Jonathan mentioned that one of the project’s challenges was related to the cost of development. The firm honored the project’s context by drawing inspiration from the 1757 Glebe House on the adjacent site, which is the oldest remaining house in the city, and the inspiration for the project’s defining saltbox roof. Maple Street Housing opened in 2019.

Ted Touloukian of Touloukian Touloukian Inc. highlighted a number of missing middle projects completed by the firm in Boston, as well as Brookline. The first, a two unit residential addition is designed above the renovation of an existing retail storefront on Dorchester Street in South Boston. The second, a set of three row-houses, built on a previously empty lot adjacent to a public park, made up of six (6 ) market rate apartments and overlook the Boylston Street Playground, while two (2 ) renovated units are a part of a restored historic 19th century townhouse on the front corner of the site. Respect and honoring of context was also mentioned, including material considerations that are well integrated into the context of the site and its surroundings.

Lastly, Paige Roosa, Director of Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab, spoke of the process and results of the “Co-creating Boston’s Future-Decker”, an initiative led in partnership with the BSA, where teams were invited to propose new multifamily housing units (6-15) to be efficiently built on small, infill sites. Beyond the missing middle typology itself, teams were asked to propose housing affordable to households earning between 80-120% of the Area Median Income, what was described in the Request for Proposals as housing for middle-income residents. Paige presented the results of the RFP, which received numerous outstanding submissions from a diverse array of development and design teams, but ultimately none achieved the financial goals for construction cost and subsidies the City desired. The Lab will continue to explore ideas regarding the use of new methods of construction to try to minimize the gap of what it costs to build housing in Boston.

To view the presentation slides, click here.

Panel Discussion

Shortly after the presentations, the panelists engaged in a thoughtful and insightful discussion, moderated by architect, educator, and researcher of multifamily housing, Sam Naylor. The discussion began with the question of what the most surprising obstacle faced by each presenter in projects of this type. Jonathan Evans answered promptly that cost was one of the biggest challenges. He later shared that the Maple Street project cost over $6m to complete the 40 unit project, which while in a different market context, and built over 6 years ago, was nevertheless a pleasantly surprising figure, but perhaps one that is un-replicable in the current market. Ted Touloukian also stressed the importance of a good team, stating that “We all have different qualities in this piece, we have different strengths and we each have different value components that make that work.” Speakers also mentioned that areas and markets, such as Massachusetts Gateway Cities, may be able to accommodate similar projects, but they have the issue of construction costs being comparable to Boston.

Correlated with construction costs were the regulatory hurdles that force projects just below an expensive threshold in order to pencil out. Hansy talked about their ongoing 12 unit affordable development in Boston which would need to be revised to be below 12,000 GSF, which ensures they do not have to meet stringent passive house energy code standards (which come with a cost premium).

The conversation also turned to which kinds of developers can make these projects work, and where the commissions were coming from. Ted shared his experience working with oftentimes combination Developer-Builders, who were able to capture both soft cost fees as a way to mitigate the loss of an overall lower profit margin for these projects. Panelists discussed ways in which these kinds of small scale developers (who often have access to less resources than larger players) could find each other, or in some way be networked together in an attempt to support the tough challenges they face through collective action.

Another question raised was related to how projects either create their own context or fit within an already existing context, and which are more deserving of our design reference. Watch the short clip below where presenters discuss topics of contextualism, community engagement, and equity as it relates to addressing the challenges of developing missing middle housing.

Watch the short clip below

Due to technical difficulties, the complete recording of the event is unavailable for viewing.

The session ended with a conversation related to community engagement practices brought up by an audience member. Paige Roosa expressed that “there is room for innovation in the best ways to engage wider audiences” and that there are a number of tools that currently exist to reach people where they are, as often mentioned by the Mayor. Ted Touloukian lifted up the need for transparency in the process to “communicate in a way that reaches people where responses don’t have to be robotic” and Hansy Better Barraza added that community engagement process is hard on working parents, and “that is probably the most challenging thing, now that we have seen such a live community engagement the expectation of the architect to be on disposal on the weekends can be challenging, but if we think of engagement and imagine someone who is older, a single parent, someone who has challenges at home, if you think of engagement with such user groups, then it can be very powerful and effective.”

Image credit: Natalie Tague, BSA.

Conclusion

The themes outlined in the presentations and discussions highlight the ongoing need and challenges for a scale of housing that is financially accessible and of a “gentler density” than large scale development projects, offering the opportunity for more walkable neighborhoods in the region. The projects included in the State of Housing Design publication, as well as those presented by the guest speakers, show that although challenging to introduce in the current market, zoning, and neighborhood contexts, these projects are not impossible to build.

Through initiatives such as Co-creating Boston’s Future-Decker, the BSA has shown its ongoing commitment to uplifting the benefits of such housing typologies. To showcase the results of this latest phase of the initiative, we invite all to view we invite all to view the Future-Decker Exhibition at the BSA Space from December, 30 2024-January 31, 2025.

Collectively we can find feasible ways to bring the best qualities of this and other missing middle efforts to Boston and beyond!